1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to additives useful for reducing fouling in furnaces. The invention particularly relates to additives useful for reducing fouling in furnaces used for producing organic chemicals.
2. Background of the Art
Chemical plants producing organic chemicals often use furnaces to heat process streams. Whether heated with steam or heat transfer fluids, or directly using burners, such furnaces function by heating tubes through which process fluids are passing. The furnaces include a number of such tubes, generally arranged vertically, that form a continuous flow path, or coil, through the furnace. These tubes are generally in a unit referred to in the art as a heat exchanger.
The tubes in a heat exchanger may be exposed to extreme heat. As the process fluids are passed through the tubes at high temperatures, the process fluids may be subject to a synthetic reaction, a reduction in undesirable products, a steric rearrangement, a decomposition, or the like, such that the resulting product exiting the outlet is either a finished product or an intermediate, depending upon the particular process. In either case, the one element that the process streams have in common is that the passing of a feed material through a flow path that is subject to heat from a burner or other heat source can result in the fouling of the surfaces of the tubes and/or production of undesirable materials within the process streams.
The deposit of any insulating material on the heat exchanging surfaces of the flow path can be undesirable in that it can result in increased energy costs as temperatures are increased to overcome the effect of the insulating deposits and increase operational costs when the furnaces are shut down for periodic cleaning of the heat exchanging surfaces. It would therefore be desirable in the art of manufacturing products using processes which include subjecting organic process streams to heat to avoid or mitigate the formation of fouling deposits on heat exchanging surfaces.